Race To Witch Mountain

18

"'Custody'?" Alex blurted out "you can't expect to keep them prisoner and get away with it! They have rights!" 

"They're illegal aliens on US soil," Burke interrupted, "without so much as a passport. The patriot act enables me to detain them for a long as necessary" 

"You can't keep this quiet" Alex said to him, "the world has the right to know that they exist" 

"And you're going to be the one to blow the whistle, Doctor?" He asked mockingly, Charlotte-Mae glaring at him "a failed astrophysicist fired by three universities for obsessing over UFOs, teams up with an ex-con and a runaway in declaring that the government has captured two normal-looking kids and is holding them hostage inside a mountain that doesn't exist? It would be so much easier to let you speak than to deal with all the paperwork involved with killing you"

"Someone will believe us" Jack said

"From behind bars?" Burke shot back, "let me remind you, Mr. Bruno, as a convicted felon, you're looking at twenty years just for standing on this mountain and talking to me. Shall I go on?" 

". . . No." Jack said, "I get the message" 

Alex looked at him in surprise,

"Smart man" Burke said, "give them a lift back down" 

"What?" Alex asked, looking at Jack "that's it? It's over?" 

"I'm sorry" Jack replied "I will not go back to prison" 

He walked over to Charlotte-Mae, bending slightly to grasp her arms, gently pulling her to her feet,

"Let's go" A man said, roughly pulling Jack, Alex and Charlotte-Mae

•

The car ride down the mountain was so tense, you could cut it with a knife,

"Thankfully Seth and Sara didn't have to witness how quickly you gave up" Alex said coldly

"I told them from the beginning it was a suicide mission, I wasn't wrong" Jack retaliated

"They trusted you" she replied "I trusted you"

"Join the club of everybody else in my life who I've disappointed" Jack said

"They will dissect them like frogs in a high school biology class" she replied "you know that"

"It's not my problem" he shot back "and it never wa-" Alex reached over Charlotte-Mae's head, slapping him across the face

"Hey!" One guy in the front said, turning around

But Jack didn't give him time to say anything else before punching him and pulling the driver over the top of him. The car swerved up over a hill of dirt and came close to going over the edge as Jack pulled and push the driver from side to side, slamming his head through the window and slamming him into his colleague, forcing them both out the other side. Alex jumped into the driver's seat and Jack jumped into passenger, while Charlotte-Mae stayed in the back, Jack closed his door and felt his jaw.

"By the way, that slap, very realistic" Jack said to Alex, "when did you know?" 

"You haven't bailed on the kids yet" she replied "why start now?"

"Mae?" Jack asked "why didn't you fight back?"

"I have a plan" she replied, shrugging slightly, looking at him with a smile

•

Alex drove around to the back of the mountain, looking for some way to get in,

"There!" Charlotte-Mae said, pointing to a concrete drainage pipe